The first hint that this debut short story collection won’t focus on the sunny and upbeat is its title. Permafrost is formed from ice holding various types of soil, sand and rock in combination and, as the Earth’s permafrost melts, it releases its greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, creating a feedback cycle that increases climate change. Layers,
‘In a snowy mountain village, my family had lived peacefully for hundreds of years …’ – so begins Karen Hendriks’ new picture book for children aged 7 and upwards. The narrative continues with guards forcing the peaceable villagers to leave their homes taking no more than they can carry. The little girl at the centre
Billy-Ray Belcourt is an NDN from the Driftpile Cree Nation and Canada’s first First Nations Rhodes scholar. He is also an award-winning poet and Assistant Professor of Indigenous Creative Writing at University of British Columbia. The essays in his non-fiction debut, A History of My Brief Body, have the resonance of poetry zinging off the
Award-winning author Ellen van Neerven has gathered a bumper crop of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories in Flock. The refreshing anthology features established and emerging Indigenous writers flexing their creative wings and considering myriad concerns in their fiction, including the joys and struggles of our First Nations people. Van Neerven is of Mununjali Yugambeh (South
Isla’s Family Tree is a delightfully conceived picture book that features a little girl who can’t see how the twins her heavily pregnant mother is carrying will fit into her family. When Isla’s mother shows her the family tree she has crafted to help illustrate how families are always growing and changing, Isla shouts, “There’s no
Poet-naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield’s fourth collection, Toward Antarctica, (Red Hen Press), is an insider’s love letter to one of the world’s most iconic wild places, and I found it unique, moving and brilliantly informative. I doubt I will ever go to the Antarctic but this book makes me feel I’ve (almost) encountered it. Bradfield recommends listening to
In a summer of catastrophic bushfires, devastating loss of life, and relentless political slyness Vicki Hastrich’s Night Fishing: Stingrays, Goya and the Singular Life is a book of solace. Its 13 essays offer us the space to look more closely at nature and linger peacefully; the opportunity to celebrate the coast, water and creativity; the
From hushed puppies to envelope poems … there’s plenty here to keep you fireside and philosophising during the last few weeks of winter. Apparently … There’s always so much to love in joanne burns’ poetry collections and apparently (Giramondo Publishing) is no exception. From her poem tipsy: ‘the pink chemist so / pink nausea pills / overdose
#WorldPoetryDay 2019 (March 21) invites us to celebrate poetry and encourage people to read, write, and teach it. Here goes … Words to wake us Mary Oliver was one of the world’s most popular and accomplished poets. She was also an ‘indefatigable guide to the natural world,’ wrote Maxine Kumin. Oliver’s poetry won numerous awards, including
Siena Stubbs was just 12 years old when she captured the bird photos that feature in this delightful book – birds she’d seen in and around Yirrkala in North East Arnhem Land all her life. Intrigued by nature, she’d been taking blurry photographs on a borrowed iPad when her aunt gave her a digital SLR.
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